![]() Weisselberg started working for Donald Trump in 1986 and eventually made $1.14 million a year in salary and bonuses.Īccording to a severance agreement he signed the day before going to jail, Weisselberg is due to be paid $2 million in eight quarterly installments. Weisselberg’s association with Trump’s family dated to 1973, when he answered a newspaper ad for a staff accountant for Trump’s real estate-developer father, Fred. He might say magnificent,” Weisselberg testified. James is seeking $250 million in penalties and a ban on Trump doing business in New York.Īt his May deposition, Weisselberg recalled how Trump sometimes underlined or wrote a question mark next to values he disputed and quibbled about the language the financial statements used to describe his properties. The civil trial concerns allegations of conspiracy, insurance fraud and falsifying business records. ![]() An appeals court on Friday blocked enforcement of that aspect of Engoron’s ruling, at least for now. In a pretrial ruling last month, Judge Arthur Engoron found that Trump, Weisselberg and other defendants committed years of fraud by exaggerating the value of Trump’s assets and net worth on his financial statements.Īs punishment, Engoron ordered that a court-appointed receiver take control of some Trump companies, putting the future of Trump Tower and other marquee properties in doubt. “What’s happened to him is very sad,” Trump said. Trump, in his deposition in April, said his former longtime lieutenant was liked and respected, and “now, he’s gone through hell and back.” “After a long, what I considered a very quiet business - a job that I had over all these years - to be thrown into this situation has had a traumatic impact on my day-to-day life and my family’s life,” Weisselberg told lawyers in the room, including James, according to a deposition transcript made public last month. Weisselberg testified Tuesday that what he’s been through in the last few years has “taken its toll” on him and his family.ĭuring sworn pretrial questioning in May, Weisselberg, 76, testified that he was having trouble sleeping, started seeing a therapist and was taking a generic form of Valium as he tried to “reacclimate myself back to society.” Weisselberg left a New York City jail six months ago after serving 100 days for dodging taxes on $1.7 million in extras that came with his Trump Organization job, including a Manhattan apartment, school tuition for his grandchildren and luxury cars for him and his wife. Trump, who attended the first three days of the non-jury trial last week in Manhattan, didn’t return to court to see his former chief financial officer testify. James’ lawsuit alleges that Weisselberg engineered Trump’s financial statements to meet his demands that they show increases in his net worth and signed off on lofty valuations for assets despite appraisals to the contrary. He took the stand after a recent jail stint for evading taxes on perks he got while working for Trump. Weisselberg, testifying as a prosecution witness, is also a defendant in the lawsuit. A week later, Trump’s 2016 financial statement was released, using the incorrect square footage. ![]() As Forbes zeroed in on the apartment size question in 2017, emails show, a company spokesperson told another Trump executive that, per Weisselberg, they weren’t to engage on the size issue.
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